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Couple reunites just in time for their child s birth after Biden lifts travel ban
Danah Harbi found love in the most unlikely of places five years ago: a refugee camp in Lebanon. An optometrist from Virginia, she was volunteering there when she met Mashaal Hamoud, a Syrian relief worker. They stayed in touch via WhatsApp.
She wanted him to come to the U.S. so they could get married but the Trump administration s ban on travel from some Muslim majority countries prevented that. So she left her job and almost sold her house to move to Lebanon.
It needed to be done because we wanted to be together, Harbi said.
7:19 Danah Harbi met her fiancé during a volunteer trip to work with Syrian refugees in Lebanon. Years later, they re still separated by the travel ban. Tyrone Turner/WAMU/DCist
toggle caption Tyrone Turner/WAMU/DCist
Danah Harbi s love story with her fiancé began with a trip to Lebanon in early 2016. The 38-year-old Syrian American flew to the country to provide aid to refugees, spurred to action by a viral image of a Syrian boy who drowned trying to cross from Turkey to Greece. Harbi and her brother boarded a flight to Beirut to deliver aid to refugee camps. As an optometrist, she brought suitcases full of gear to set up a clinic within the camps.
There may be no regaining what was lost: precious moments with loved ones, money spent on visits to stranded partners, opportunities in the United States dangled and then dashed.
Repeal of Trump s Muslim ban offers new hope to frustrated immigrants and long-suffering families
Kareem Fahim, Durrie Bouscaren and Louisa Loveluck, The Washington Post
Jan. 23, 2021
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President Biden picks up a pen in the Oval Office to sign a raft of executive orders, including one that repealed his predecessor s Muslim travel ban, on Jan. 20.Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford.
ISTANBUL - Danah Harbi went to another doctor s appointment this week without her fiance, as she has for most of her six-month pregnancy, as she has for all manner of appointments and engagements during their long, forced separation. Maybe they will be together when the child is born this spring, but the last few years have been cruel and capricious, and the future has been hard to predict.